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Turing Tales

This is the landing page of the eponymous book. The publisher also has a page about the book where you can find a very concise summary, some endorsements (forthcoming), and technical details. Feel free to leave feedback on the book by contacting egdaylight "at" dijkstrascry "dot" com.

From the Back Cover

WHAT IS A COMPUTER PROGRAM?

Are you receptive to the multitude of answers to this seemingly simple question? Historical and philosophical reflections in this book will reveal that a computer program always had, and still has, several different meanings. Such epistemic pluralism is a feature of emerging fields, and computer science is still too young a field to be any different.

Even before the advent of Twitter, the wide dissemination of an idea in our Western world required a compact and attractive formulation. Examples in contemporary computer science are:

Turing invented the computer.

Full formal verification is possible.

Unfortunately, computer scientists promote, and some believe, these over-simplified statements themselves. Technically inaccurate accounts have been written about Turing's purported legacy and about allegedly important topics that carry his name (such as `Turing completeness' and `Turing universality'). Much needed rectifications are provided here for the sake of obtaining conceptual clarity and making computer science a slightly more mature discipline.